Tag Archives: upgrade

Aha the last piece of the puzzle (until I get my memory upgrade later). This article covers an OWC 2.5″ Tray Installation for SSD on MacPro 2009.

Here’s the OWC 2.5″ Drive Tray installation… took longer to pull out of the box and take pictures than actually install (and much longer to write this blog post!). As I noted before I connected my SSD and installed the drive on the Optical Bay SATAs for OS Installation via Time Machine backup of my 13″ MacBook Pro (2010).

It really WAS this simple. It’s a lovely box!

Open the box, pull out the tray. I put the SSD next to to make sure the hole align (note that it came with screws in this kit!)

Verify that when it slides in the SATA port is on the correct side and alignment (you don’t have to stand on your head unless you want to). Screw in the 4 screws so that it’s nice and snug.

Slide the tray into an open bay until you feel the drive push in and it’s flush.And boot!

The speed differences on the optical bay SATA and motherboard are minimal, standard SATA2 speeds. If I feel adventurous I may get a SATA3 PCI Express card for it, but these speeds are more than enough for my uses.

MacPro Sata2- on motherboardMacPro Sata2 on Optical Bay Cable

This tray is definitely worth the money — 2 thumbs up!

So far OWC has great kudos in my book for supporting non-supported Macs such as my new (to me!) 2009 MacPro.

Just a note, I’ve already installed Mavericks on my Samsung 1TB SSD, but the tray from OWC hasn’t come in yet, so I’ve got it plugged into a SATA port in the Media bay for now – the drive in bay 4 is a 1TB standard platter drive for Time Machine.

The most insane thing (not having the hardware in front of me) was going on faith that this whole deal would work. None of the photos online gave me clear pics of the power outputs on the motherboard — well, there they are – on the bottom left of the green. They’re pointed up, but they’re two min-six pin power points.

I already knew I needed a couple of adapters. Just run a search for MacPro PCI Express Video power adapters and get the 6, 4 or 8 pins you’ll need for your card. Mine required a 6 pin and an 8 pin. I think I spent $17 for both cables on a seller from Amazon.

2009 MacPro Upgrade Project Inspection

The MacPro has arrived. My workbench has been set up and I’m ready for any cosmetic repairs that bother me. This post is going to give an overview of the quality and repairability of 2009 MacPro Upgrade Project Inspection. First things first. Let’s open up the box and verify that it boots and everything functions as expected. The packaging was quite cheap, but extremely effective. I’m not going to complain at all (other than I had to pull out some scissors during the de-bubblewrapping). Good stuff. The grill damage that was pictured in the auction wasn’t nearly as annoying to me in person as I thought, so for now I’m cool with it. However I did notice a definite absence of a Optical Drive (it wasn’t included in the features, so it’s more a surprise than an annoyance). The motherboard looks like it’s in good shape, clean and spotless. The stock video card looks like it’s in great shape too. It doesn’t have 3 of the drive sleds, but that was also expected. I had planned on replacing one with a 2.5″ from Otherworld Computing… that’ll be in a later post. Time for first boot! Took a few seconds for it to come up (but I’m used to SSD speeds on my MacBook Pro), but it came up. The Password Hint was genius. This was brought me a smile to my face…. nicely done (wait, I have the same combination on my luggage!!!). It matters not, as one of the first things I’m replacing and adding is an SSD for the box (see later post) and I’ll run a Time Machine restore on the new drive. All system functioning, just fine.

The only surprise/disappointment was the lack of an Optical Drive… otherwise I’m very happy with it.

Mac Pro Upgrade Project (MacPro 4,1 circa 2009)

I just won a bid for a 2009 Mac Pro (Quad Core Xeon 2.66). I plan on making this my primary technology project for the summer. It’s got a few dents, dings and scratches on it, but I think I can clean/buff those out. It’s a pretty minimalistic machine as far as it goes, but because it’s an older Mac Pro there are MANY fairly inexpensive opportunities to upgrade this box to a workhorse media machine. This Mac Pro upgrade project should be quite an adventure.

Mac Pro Upgrade Project – Mac with Ding

Specs at Purchase

Mac Pro 4,1 A1289

Quad Core Xeon @ 2.66ghz

7 Gigs RAM

250 Gig HD

I’ll be performing some piecemeal repairs and upgrades to this machine as I learn about how these are designed. I’ve only seen the outside of one in person, never the inside. However some of the videos and reviews I’ve been watching sure makes some of the upgrades to appear fairly easy to handle. Again, I’m not a hardware guru, but I do get along quite well with knowing my cabling and specifications.

The biggest problem I foresee is the uncharted territory that I’m entering with a used (and although the description reads fully functional, I get paranoid) Mac Pro. Once the system is on my workbench I’ll be able to give a better analysis and overview.